Trash Your Desktop" Mitch Kapor’s new, more intuitive computer interface...

Trash Your Desktop" Mitch Kapor’s new, more intuitive computer interface... "Code-named Chandler, after the mystery writer (because, Kapor says, what they’re creating was something of a mystery even to them when the venture launched two years ago), the software promises to put all related e-mail messages, spreadsheets, appointment records, addresses, blog entries, word-processing documents, digital photos, and what-have-you in one place at one time: no more opening program after program looking for the items related to a specific topic. It takes the core functions of Microsoft Outlook, the Palm Desktop, and other personal information management programs and integrates them with the rest of your PC and the Internet. All the information you need to complete a given task or project is grouped on-screen, organized around the one function—e-mail—Kapor sees as the central conduit of our electronic lives.
Because Chandler presents information in its logical context—displaying all related items together—and not in the separate folders and application windows of the traditional desktop computer system, you can think of it as a new way into your computer. “It may be hubristic,” says Kapor, “but we’re trying to push the edge of the envelope in terms of innovation, and trying to pioneer a new type of interface”—one that he thinks is sorely needed. “Software is too difficult, too limiting, and pretty severely so, and it’s a raw deal. The average user really gets screwed.”